


Leave of Absence

by wired



Category: Iron Man (Movieverse), Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairing, Epistolary, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-21
Updated: 2010-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-11 15:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/114022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wired/pseuds/wired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Portions of a correspondence between two women who stand behind their geniuses</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave of Absence

[being a fragmentary part of a correspondence that also included real-time messaging, lolcat links, fashion comparisons, and serious shoe-shopping]

Dear Ms. Potts --

I hope you don't mind me writing to you. I am a fan of your work and I have some questions about how you manage to stand behind such a brilliant man and be brilliant yourself and help him look so good and never... seem less than yourself. I need some help in a similar situation.

How do you handle the stress? How do you keep track of the comings and goings? What do you do about the personality shifts between public and secret identities?

I know these may be intrusive questions, and I will understand if you don't answer, but I am trying to educate myself as much as possible, and you seem like an excellent mentor. There are not a lot of women I can think of who share our unique set of circumstances.

Ekatarin V.

~~

Dear Ekatarin --

Please call me Pepper. All my friends do.

Excuse me if my letters are slightly delayed. I have just become CEO of a major company, and it's strangely harder to do than running it from the shadows. The actual work isn't beyond my scope, but it requires a lot of face time and that is unexpectedly difficult. Before it was his, and I was just making a genius look like a slightly more organized genius, but now I have to be so good at his job that no one wonders why the genius isn't the one running the company.

As for your questions:  
1) I handle the stress by a concentrated private yoga practice, a therapeutic shopping budget of massive proportions, and only thinking about things in 15 minute increments. Also, although you never see them, I have my own assistants that I can delegate to. I don't know if any of that is applicable to someone who does not have essentially a limitless budget. When I am overwhelmed, though, I just stop and think about what needs to be done in the next 15 minutes. That ratchets down my anxiety a lot.

2) For keeping track, I have an app for that. I believe that you also have access to this kind of technology. I make his appointments if I can because otherwise he won't remember to tell me about them.

3) The personal/private life shift is hardest for me. He's always working, and he's always screwing around, and I can't get him to differentiate that. When I figure out how to manage that better, I'll let you know.

And now it's my reputation on the line. We'll see how well I do at being the boss.

Pepper Potts

~~

Dear Pepper --

I understand. When everything else is gone, reputation and honor are all we have. Everything else is transitory.

Thank you so much for your helpful tips on genius-wrangling. I think a lot about it, and it's comforting to know I am not alone.

I have read something about how you came into your company, and I need to ask you a question that I hope is not rude in your culture.

How do you deal with being given something you've earned? Not earning it and getting it as your just dues, but earning it and then getting it as a present, as a token, as a way someone can say "I love you"? Because I have had a similar situation myself, and I am incandescently angry.

Ekatarin

~~

Dear Ekatarin --

I think I'll get to angry as soon as I stop panicking about what it means, both that I need to run this company and that he loves me. I don't know what to do about that. He already takes up so much of my life, my waking moments. I am worried that he will consume me all, like a corporate merger. He's everywhere, and I can't stop thinking about him because it's my job to think about him, and yet somehow I am so busy doing that that I don't have time to think about how I feel about him. I do love him, of course I do, or I wouldn't spend so much time worrying about him and all the ways he can get hurt, all the ways he can die. I do, don't I?

Pepper

P.S. Why can't we just earn the good things, instead of being given them as if we are little girls who were asking for a pony? I didn't ask for a pony, I earned the respect and skills to do this job.

~~

Dear Pepper --

I know I wrote you asking for advice, but I have had that kind of relationship, and .... you must hold fast. You must hold some part of yourself aside, lest you be entirely consumed. Pepper Potts is too vital and alive to sacrifice herself to what any man needs. I have learned that at great cost to myself. I can love someone with my whole heart, but I will never again give a man control of my identity. I am Ekatarin, and I am a mother, and I can choose how to behave around the men who want me, even if I can't always choose how I feel about them.

Pepper, I have longed for a friend, and at times in my life, one would have felt lifesaving. I hope I can also be that friend to you, the friend who loves what is best and most honest and self-reliant in you. I am telling you now that signing over your life to him in a professional sense may be your best decision for right now, but I am never going to advocate for you giving over your inmost self. That bastion of self is all we have to keep us from being washed away by the vulnerable, beautiful, larger-than-life men we love.

Please consider me your advocate and friend,

Ekatarin

~~

Dear Ekatarin --

Thank you. Your letter came at just the right time. I feel like you have pulled me back from a brink of some kind. I am Pepper Potts, and I can run a huge multinational company in Louboutins, and I can run it better than many people because I've been doing it all along, just with the added disadvantage of trying to make a boy genius act like an adult. I'm sure you can sympathize.

Himself and I are going to be out your direction next week (operational security blah blah). Do you think you could get a sitter and sneak off for a girl's night out? We can hang out, have a couple drinks, talk about anything but the guys.

Your drinking buddy,

Pepper

~~

Dear Pepper --

I've arranged for "leave", and a suite at a local place that I think will impress even you. It's good that you're catching me at the end of the semester when I already have downtime scheduled. I look forward to seeing you in three days!

Ekatarin

~~

Ekatarin --

2 days! Not that I'm counting down or anything!

Pepper

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear --

Oh, Pepper. I have started this letter a dozen times, and I am starting to feel Miles' pain at trying to compress large emotions into words.

Oh, Virginia. Let me start by calling you the name you deserve, the moniker of an ancient queen. I am so distracted by you, by thinking of our weekend. I am distracted by the remembrance of your hair falling past my hand on your neck, the elegant line of your hip, the warm smear of your lipstick across my lips. I cannot stop thinking about you, and when I think about you, you are my secret garden. You are the pocket of green hidden behind my public persona, the cultivated memory and the winding paths. I do not want to disclose your affection, your touch. It is my own secret, and it is beautiful, and sustaining.

I am not sure if you are ready for this effusive outpouring -- we had so little time for talking, but there can be talking now, when kissing is unavailable. Please tell me that my patent attraction and affection are not off-putting, or if they are, say so, but please do not stop being my friend. I have come to rely on you by degrees, as my friend, and now, I hope, as something more.

-Eka

~~

Sweet Eka --

While you were writing this, I was writing something to you which is now deleted, but comes out to the same thing. I think I need you in my life, I need the thought of you out there, someone who I can return to, and rest in. I need you to be an advocate of Virginia, when all the rest of the world sees Pepper. I know that all we can really hope for is moments and weekends, that travel is cumbersome and that both of us have our geniuses, our duties. But I feel that when I am with you, I am myself, in a way that I am not, never will be for him.

And oh, I hope the next weekend comes soon. I ache to sit twined around you again, my arms around your beautifully rippled waist, your dark hair spilling down between my breasts. I want to be cut off from everything but the sound of the ocean and your breathing. I want to run my hand down your leg until I lose my balance, and lie laughing, at your feet. I want to lean my shoulder against you and have you lean back.

Being with you shuts down all my self-doubt and worry, and I can be just me. You give me such quiet that I can hear myself think again. And all I can think now that I'm not with you is...

I want you.

Your Virginia


End file.
